Osaretin Victor Asemota, the Nigerian Tech entrepreneur, has stated that he loses trust for anyone he does business with once they start cheating on their spouses.
In a post shared on X, Osaretin opined that if one could cheat on their spouses, they could also cheat partners in business.
Read his interesting submission below…
”Jay’s (not his real name) father was a well known religious figure. The family is wealthy and he married into another wealthy family. His wife was gorgeous and accomplished but he had one weakness. He slept with maids and househelps in our estate. I was shocked when I found out.
It was a perversion and he was a sex predator but he didn’t see it that way. He genuinely felt that it was some form of benevolence. He would argue with the bible and show how Abraham and others were truly polygamous and I later discovered that his father had secret families.
Cheating on a spouse was not a new thing in his family and it seemed that the women all knew and accommodated this indiscretion. I started looking into my own family too and it was also very common. I have been used by uncles to transport their girlfriends and met secret families
One relative was a federal permanent secretary whose wife and daughters discovered that he had another family with five sons in Lagos for 25 years. It still didn’t make it right and I was never comfortable with it.
I have seen polygamy where it works and where it doesn’t.
One of my father’s uncles had four wives and considered my father a fool for having only one. The problem was that there was always constant chaos in his household. His most senior wife was my mother’s cousin and she was a very unhappy woman. The children were unhappy too.
I liked our simpler arrangement at home until I discovered that my father was cheating on my mother too.
It was with a woman who owned a place he took us to go and eat regularly. It made my mother miserable and caused quarrels. He eventually broke up with her and I remembered.
My father married 4 other women after my mother left him eventually and he never found happiness because he told me so. He told me that the biggest mistake I would ever make was to find a good woman and lose her as he did with my mother. They were never divorced but separated.
They were very much in love and saw each other weekly when my mother still lived in Nigeria. They just could never live together as my father could not stop seeing other women. It used to puzzle me until I met my friend Oladipo “Dipo” Oke during our NYSC year in Lagos.
Dipo was a fine boy and a player. He was loved by many and he shocked us by deciding to get married at age 22.
His decision was simple, he had seen that infidelity and promiscuity was an addiction that people find hard to break and it was better that he never formed the habit.
He always told me that it wasn’t something that you suddenly switch off after getting married and that was why most men never stop. If you were always promiscuous, you will continue to be so even within marriage. This was very true and I saw that with my family members.
He learned from his own family too and decided to settle down when he met someone he loved. She was also 22 and much more mature than all of us then. She knew what she wanted as well.
Their union was rare because it wasn’t because he knocked her up or was forced.
Most early marriages I knew at the time were because of pregnancy. My parents also got married because my mother was pregnant with me. Dipo’s case was different. It was purely for love.
I learned the hard way about addiction to promiscuity because I was hooked on it for years.
I had to go cold turkey for 19 months from Mekwe before I was sure that I could get married and not cheat. It was one of the most trying periods of my life.
In those 19 months, I learned that promiscuity was a double edged sword. Women loved Mekwe too and wanted a lot of it.
Women could be as devious as men when it comes to sexual conquests as well. Because I was deliberately celibate, I became a prize to be won. They tried harder than I ever expected to get me to break it. I couldn’t believe it. From colleagues to friends, I was harassed.
I was accused of being homosexual and impotent. I was called all sorts of names and I stood my ground because it became a spiritual test and not just about will power. I learned a lot about myself and temptation in that period. I learned that our biggest problems come from habit.
I read something recently that the thing you become tomorrow comes from your daily habits today and it is very true.
Once I gave up the habit of promiscuity, I replaced it with work. I did a lot better and my net worth grew. I didn’t realize how much time I had devoted to Mekwe.
The danger of habit is that we make excuses for it and rationalize our choices. The guy Jay who was sleeping with househelps found it logical instead of it being predatory. He even used the bible to justify his position. He was a weak man and he is still a weak man till today.
Infidelity doesn’t make you macho or strong. It just means you don’t have a moral compass and can’t be trusted.
Once I see that anyone I am doing business with cheats on their spouse, I don’t trust them anymore. They could do it to me too. It is a weakness.
